A refrain often intoned by the Democratic Party and used in the last Presidential campaign is the perceived need to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. In the Obama Administration’s latest addition to their reign of incompetence, they have thrust their measly approval rating of 39 percent behind a Senate defense policy bill titled the National Defense Authorization Act of 2014. The bill in question would ease the restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees that have been partially cleared for release, transfer overseas, or relocation to the United States for costly medical procedures.
For the blissfully unaware portion of the public, Guantanamo is just some high security shed in the tropics where the United States detains terrorists or those that closely resemble them on shoddy evidence and hunches. The last propaganda campaign that comes to mind regarding the prison was when rapper Yasiin Bey, better known as Mos Def, was force fed with essentially the same procedure used at Guantanamo when detainees go on a hunger strike and are nearing starving to death. This little stunt stirred up discontent, astoundingly not at the mass murderers going on hunger strikes (those poor delicate flowers), but at the United States government for keeping said murderers alive. Maintaining the prison is no small feat however. According to testimony given by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to the Senate, Guantanamo Bay costs taxpayers a pretty penny with about 2.7 million spent per detainee annually. Despite its massive annual budget of 454 million, Guantanamo and its reasons for being remains a shady area in the policy cognizance of mainstream Americans.
Those imprisoned within Guantanamo are radical Islamists and jihadists, which by definition means those who ‘participant in jihad’. Jihad, for future reference, means holy war. Should their hunger strikes have resulted in their death, these men would have died for their cause thus become martyrs, a fate idealized within their radicalized faiths. They were denied opportunities for martyrdom upon the ceasing of their jihadist’s activities—read their detainment in Guantanamo. I have not an ounce of pity for the detainees who are offered three square meals a day and turn them down, which is more than some U.S. troops fighting for those such as Yasiin Bey’s very right to protest Guantanamo have available. Often deployed troops have to ration their meals to one or two per eighteen-hour day, and yet no activists are decrying the inhumanity of that reality.
The main argument put forth by anti-Gitmo idealists is that many of those being detained have not had either a military or civilian trial. Yet, when Osama bin Laden was killed without a trial and dropped out of a helicopter in an unceremonious water burial, there was practically dancing in the streets across America. Certainly there weren’t any audible cries for habeas corpus then. Bin Laden and those detained in Guantanamo share the shame radical ideology, the same relentless malevolence for infidels, and the same deep-rooted hatred for Western culture. Twenty eight percent of those released from Gitmo return to terrorism that the Department of Defense is aware of. The actual number of released detainees who reengage with al Qaeda and other similar jihadist terror cells cannot be calculated, even by the all seeing NSA.
The detainees are terrorists, almost all of which have the innocent blood of thousands of Americans and even their own countries’ citizens on their hands. And yet some U.S. citizens pity them, going so far as to passively show them more compassion and support than they do for U.S. troops. Guantanamo prisoners are playing on the liberal U.S. propaganda machine and it’s influence on the naïve public, drawing sympathy for their release. Unfortunately, some are putty in their hands.
The reason many of the 164 currently detained have not and will not go to trial is because the evidence against them is inadmissible in American courts. These prisoners are still too dangerous to be released, and so are held as enemy combatants. They are radicals fighting an ideologically based battle. You cannot reason with, persuade, or change their conditioned beliefs moored in hatred. Closing Guantanamo Bay out of pity and misinformation would be like knowingly opening Pandora’s Box so all the evils locked within could get some fresh air and sunshine. Don’t be Pandora, and don’t shut down Guantanamo Bay while it is still serving its purpose.
Whitney Greer is a sophomore English major from Medford, Oregon.
— Whitney Greer
whitneygreere@gmail.com
